I recently finished this small oil painting based on the Roman Pines that I saw on our trip to Italy. I took a lot of liberty with the colors. This past fall I was noticing, as I do every year, the vivid yellows in the trees here in Atlanta. Yellow is a standout color for me especially against a blue sky. I wanted to include those colors in a piece and I wanted to do another Roman Pines painting so I combined the two. Couldn’t help but be influenced again by Georgia O’Keeffe. I call it “Transitioning”.

When we landed in Rome on our trip to Italy I noticed the very tall trees in the distance with slender trunks and a canopy way up top. I found out later that they are Roman pines. Since we left immediately for Tuscany I didn’t get to see them again until we came back to Rome to stay for a few days before coming home. I fell in love with these trees! My friend Paul, who was with us, called them “Jack trees” because he knows the kind of trees I love to paint—expressive ones.

I was out one night with Bob while he was doing some night photography and I asked him to take a few shots on the trees looking up from below. They were being lit by street lights and looked very different than they did during daylight. I just finished my first painting from the photos. I knew, even when I saw the trees that night, that I was being inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe’s painting, The Lawrence Tree, which I’ve always thought was oriented so that the trunk comes up from the bottom. According to several sources it should be the other way around. like this—

I did this small painting last weekend. This was a house that was next to where we were staying in Provincetown last May. It had a very large deck that was right on the harbor. It’s a large one bedroom house on the market for $2.1 million!

The time of day was late afternoon so the sun was casting yellow highlights on the weathered wood shingles that covered the sides and roof of the house. Weathered wood shingles always remind me of Cape Cod.

These are the last two paintings I completed that I’ll be showing in the next exhibit at the gallery opening April 2, 7pm to 10pm. I’ll be showing with three very talented artists Bob and I first saw at the Telephone Factory Art Show & Sale last Dec—Alex Leopold, Demone Phelps and Stacie Uhinck Rose.

It feels great getting back to oil painting! Please join us at the opening! I’ll have 10 to 11 small paintings at affordable prices.